<p><em>Daily Faceoff&#8217;s</em> Anthony Di Marco threw out an interesting idea on Friday morning: what would a 4 Nations Face-Off team look like if it were <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/who-could-build-a-better-b-team-at-the-4-nations-face-off-canada-or-usa">entirely made out of players born in Quebec</a>?</p>
<p></p>
<p>It got me thinking about what that would look like if <em>only</em> players, coaches and members of management were made exclusively from people born in Alberta?</p>
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<h2>Management Group</h2>
<p><em>General Manager: Jim Nill (Hanna, Alta.)</em></p>
<p><em>Assistant general managers: <a href="https://oilersnation.com/2020/06/12/nhl-history-glen-sather-steps-down-as-edmonton-oilers-head-coach/">Glen Sather</a> (High River, Alta.), Shane Doan (Halkirk, Alta.)</em></p>
<p>Selecting a general manager was a pretty easy process, as Jim Nill — a two-time winner of the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award — was an easy choice here. He&#8217;s done tremendous work building out the roster for the Dallas Stars in recent years, and him running the show for the Alberta squad makes a ton of sense.</p>
<p>Glen Sather, six years after stepping down as the New York Rangers president, comes out of his semi-retirement to work alongside Nill in shaping this roster. He&#8217;s still got the fire for hockey as in the years since leaving his full-time role in the Big Apple he&#8217;s remained as a senior advisor for the Blueshirts.</p>
<p>Shane Doan has experience on the international stage already, serving in multiple front office roles for Canada&#8217;s Spengler Cup and World Championship teams. He served as a special assistant to the general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs last year, and is the current owner of the WHL&#8217;s Kamloops Blazers.</p>
<h2>Coaching staff</h2>
<p><em>Head coach: Lindy Ruff (Warburg, Alta.)</em></p>
<p><em>Assistant coaches: Dave Hakstol (Warburg, Alta.), Darryl Sutter (Viking, Alta.)</em></p>
<p>The pride of Warburg, Alberta come to get together on this coaching staff, with Ruff as the head coach and Hakstol one of his assistants. It was a bit of a challenge to find other coaches from Alberta, but if we expanded this to an Alberta <em>and</em> Saskatchewan team, we&#8217;d surely have some more success. Would Darryl Sutter come off the farm to help Alberta? That would be fun to see.</p>
<h1>The roster</h1>
<h2>Forwards</h2>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-165629" src="http://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-22.jpg" alt="" width="922" height="304" srcset="https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-22.jpg 922w, https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-22-300x99.jpg 300w, https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-22-768x253.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" /></p>
<p>The forward group gets thin in a hurry for Team Alberta. The top line is anchored by Brayden Point, which is a huge boon, and would be flanked by <a href="https://oilersnation.com/2024/11/17/nhl-notebook-blackhawks-taylor-hall-healthy-scratched-saturday-night-against-canucks/">Taylor Hall</a> and Brendan Gallagher. This trio are one, two and three in terms of points among active Alberta players, and while, in theory, William Nylander <em>could</em> be included here, he&#8217;s only ever represented Sweden in international tournaments, so he&#8217;s off the list.</p>
<p>Kirby Dach (?) centres the second line, with Jake DeBrusk and a young star in Dylan Guenther. There&#8217;s fewer active centres to pick from for something like this, but Dach has put up 34 goals and 107 points in 238 NHL games. DeBrusk adds some size, bite and scoring touch, and Guenther is one of the league&#8217;s brightest up-and-comers, already putting up 34 goals and 71 points in 103 games.</p>
<p>The third line has some St. Louis there with Dylan Holloway and Jake Neighbours, centred by friend of us all Noah Gregor, while the fourth features Sam Steel, Brett Howden and Nicolas Aube-Kubel, which would be the defacto shutdown line. Ridly Greig slides in as the extra body.</p>
<h2>Defence</h2>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-165630 size-full" src="http://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-23.jpg" alt="" width="784" height="348" srcset="https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-23.jpg 784w, https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-23-300x133.jpg 300w, https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-23-768x341.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 784px) 100vw, 784px" /></p>
<p>The strength of this team will undoubtedly be on the blueline. It&#8217;s anchored by a top pairing of Josh Morrissey and Cale Makar, which you could easily put up against any other in an international tournament. Makar would have to do a lot of heavy lifting and generating offence.</p>
<p>The second pairing of <a href="https://oilersnation.com/news/edmonton-oilers-3-stars-of-the-week-brett-kulak-adds-to-his-strong-season">Brett Kulak</a> and Jared Spurgeon would be sneaky good, with the former having an excellent start to his season in Edmonton. Spurgeon, meanwhile, continues to be someone who is incredibly underrated, being an excellent play-driver.</p>
<p>Your third pairing is your matchup pairing, with Colton Parayko being a strong shutdown defenceman and Middleton being someone who can play a two-way game. Olen Zellweger is going to be a great defenceman one day, and is already putting up offence with six goals and 19 points in his first 49 games.</p>
<h2>Goalies</h2>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-165632" src="http://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-25.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="361" srcset="https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-25.jpg 500w, https://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-25-300x217.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></p>
<p>Well, this was easy. There&#8217;s only three Alberta-born goalies active in the NHL right now, so&#8230;. yeah. Not much thought needed to be put into this.</p>
<h2>The verdict</h2>
<p>There&#8217;s nothing more cliche about Alberta than a hard-working, blue-collar mentality, and that&#8217;s exactly what this team would bring. Admittedly, I have difficulty seeing them compete with other international teams. They lack star power beyond Point and Makar, and this forward group&#8217;s bottom falls out quickly.</p>
<p>It feels like they would be the kind of team that tries to grind out wins, which would fit well with the coaching staff of Ruff, Hakstol, and Sutter, who are known as coaches who bring that out of their teams.</p>
<p>The goaltending might be able to keep up, as Skinner is someone who always is at his best when he&#8217;s seeing lots of pucks — and I imagine he would here.</p>
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<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist, making up one-half of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@daily_faceoff/streams">DFO DFS Report</a>. He can be followed on Twitter at</span></i> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/zjlaing"><span style="font-weight: 400;">@zjlaing</span></a><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.</span></i></p>
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<em>Daily Faceoff's</em> Anthony Di Marco threw out an interesting idea on Friday morning: what would a 4 Nations Face-Off team look like if it were <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/who-could-build-a-better-b-team-at-the-4-nations-face-off-canada-or-usa">entirely made out of players born in Quebec</a>?



It got me thinking about what that would look like if <em>only</em> players, coaches and members of management were made exclusively from people born in Alberta?
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<h2>Management Group</h2>
<em>General Manager: Jim Nill (Hanna, Alta.)</em>

<em>Assistant general managers: <a href="https://oilersnation.com/2020/06/12/nhl-history-glen-sather-steps-down-as-edmonton-oilers-head-coach/">Glen Sather</a> (High River, Alta.), Shane Doan (Halkirk, Alta.)</em>

Selecting a general manager was a pretty easy process, as Jim Nill — a two-time winner of the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award — was an easy choice here. He's done tremendous work building out the roster for the Dallas Stars in recent years, and him running the show for the Alberta squad makes a ton of sense.

Glen Sather, six years after stepping down as the New York Rangers president, comes out of his semi-retirement to work alongside Nill in shaping this roster. He's still got the fire for hockey as in the years since leaving his full-time role in the Big Apple he's remained as a senior advisor for the Blueshirts.

Shane Doan has experience on the international stage already, serving in multiple front office roles for Canada's Spengler Cup and World Championship teams. He served as a special assistant to the general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs last year, and is the current owner of the WHL's Kamloops Blazers.
<h2>Coaching staff</h2>
<em>Head coach: Lindy Ruff (Warburg, Alta.)</em>

<em>Assistant coaches: Dave Hakstol (Warburg, Alta.), Darryl Sutter (Viking, Alta.)</em>

The pride of Warburg, Alberta come to get together on this coaching staff, with Ruff as the head coach and Hakstol one of his assistants. It was a bit of a challenge to find other coaches from Alberta, but if we expanded this to an Alberta <em>and</em> Saskatchewan team, we'd surely have some more success. Would Darryl Sutter come off the farm to help Alberta? That would be fun to see.
<h1>The roster</h1>
<h2>Forwards</h2>
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-165629" src="http://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-22.jpg" alt="" width="922" height="304" />

The forward group gets thin in a hurry for Team Alberta. The top line is anchored by Brayden Point, which is a huge boon, and would be flanked by <a href="https://oilersnation.com/2024/11/17/nhl-notebook-blackhawks-taylor-hall-healthy-scratched-saturday-night-against-canucks/">Taylor Hall</a> and Brendan Gallagher. This trio are one, two and three in terms of points among active Alberta players, and while, in theory, William Nylander <em>could</em> be included here, he's only ever represented Sweden in international tournaments, so he's off the list.

Kirby Dach (?) centres the second line, with Jake DeBrusk and a young star in Dylan Guenther. There's fewer active centres to pick from for something like this, but Dach has put up 34 goals and 107 points in 238 NHL games. DeBrusk adds some size, bite and scoring touch, and Guenther is one of the league's brightest up-and-comers, already putting up 34 goals and 71 points in 103 games.

The third line has some St. Louis there with Dylan Holloway and Jake Neighbours, centred by friend of us all Noah Gregor, while the fourth features Sam Steel, Brett Howden and Nicolas Aube-Kubel, which would be the defacto shutdown line. Ridly Greig slides in as the extra body.
<h2>Defence</h2>
<img class="aligncenter wp-image-165630 size-full" src="http://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-23.jpg" alt="" width="784" height="348" />

The strength of this team will undoubtedly be on the blueline. It's anchored by a top pairing of Josh Morrissey and Cale Makar, which you could easily put up against any other in an international tournament. Makar would have to do a lot of heavy lifting and generating offence.

The second pairing of <a href="https://oilersnation.com/news/edmonton-oilers-3-stars-of-the-week-brett-kulak-adds-to-his-strong-season">Brett Kulak</a> and Jared Spurgeon would be sneaky good, with the former having an excellent start to his season in Edmonton. Spurgeon, meanwhile, continues to be someone who is incredibly underrated, being an excellent play-driver.

Your third pairing is your matchup pairing, with Colton Parayko being a strong shutdown defenceman and Middleton being someone who can play a two-way game. Olen Zellweger is going to be a great defenceman one day, and is already putting up offence with six goals and 19 points in his first 49 games.
<h2>Goalies</h2>
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-165632" src="http://publish.oilersnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-25.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="361" />

Well, this was easy. There's only three Alberta-born goalies active in the NHL right now, so.... yeah. Not much thought needed to be put into this.
<h2>The verdict</h2>
There's nothing more cliche about Alberta than a hard-working, blue-collar mentality, and that's exactly what this team would bring. Admittedly, I have difficulty seeing them compete with other international teams. They lack star power beyond Point and Makar, and this forward group's bottom falls out quickly.

It feels like they would be the kind of team that tries to grind out wins, which would fit well with the coaching staff of Ruff, Hakstol, and Sutter, who are known as coaches who bring that out of their teams.

The goaltending might be able to keep up, as Skinner is someone who always is at his best when he's seeing lots of pucks — and I imagine he would here.

<hr />

<i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist, making up one-half of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@daily_faceoff/streams">DFO DFS Report</a>. He can be followed on Twitter at</span></i> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/zjlaing"><span style="font-weight: 400;">@zjlaing</span></a><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.</span></i>

<hr />

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What would an Alberta-only team look like at the 4 Nations Face-Off?

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